Jan McGuinness

“If we can make it easier to care for patients with complex needs, and make our complex healthcare system simpler and more accessible, it’s a much better experience for everybody,” says Jan McGuinness, Director of Clinical Transformation for the Clinical & Systems Transformation project.

Caring for patients – that’s why we all come to work each day. Our healthcare professionals work hard to provide the best possible care, and you deserve the information, tools and systems to help them to do that work in a more efficient way!

Right now, teams of healthcare staff from the three organizations are working together to understand and decide what the new clinical practices and clinical information system should look like (see http://cstproject.ca/our-work/clinical-transformation for details).

There are, however, some things we know now. We know we’re working towards HIMSS Level 5 for acute inpatient and outpatient departments. HIMSS is the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society, and HIMSS Level 5 is a level on their ‘EMR Adoption Model’.

But what does that mean?

“It’s a global standard for integrated health information systems,” explains Jan. “The higher the level, the more integrated the system is, meaning that you’re using technology to enable good, safe practice.”

At HIMSS Level 5, a clinical information system is capable of:

• storing medical information centrally
• automating flow sheets
• sharing digital medical images
• alerting users to possible problems (e.g.: drug-to-drug interactions, allergies)
• allowing care providers to enter orders into a computerized system (CPOE)
• making standard clinical protocols available automatically, and
• closed loop medication management.

We’ll explain some of these capabilities in future articles, but to find out more, please email info@CSTproject.ca.

To find out more, or if you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions for future articles, please email info@CSTproject.ca. or contact:

Dr. Bruce Long, Chief Medical Information Officer, VCH/PHC
Bruce.Long@vch.ca
T: 604.675.2510 | Ext: 22475

Dr. Kellé Payne, CST Executive Director and Transformation Lead, VCH
Kelle.Payne@vch.ca
T: 604.675.2510 | Ext: 22444